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What is Korea’s fashion scene like to an Italian buyer?

Mario Dell’Oglio shares thoughts on Seoul Fashion Week

By Im Eun-byel

Published : March 23, 2018 - 10:42

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At the 2018 HERA fall-winter Seoul Fashion Week, there is a distinctive crowd that fills the front rows of fashion shows other than fashion industry insiders, models and celebrities -- buyers.

They work for high-end department stores, boutiques and online shopping websites, who decide on what items will be stocked in their stores. It is basically business-to-business shopping.
 

Mario Dell’Oglio speaks during an interview with The Korea Herald at Dongdaemun Design Plaza on Thursday. (Seoul Design Foundation) Mario Dell’Oglio speaks during an interview with The Korea Herald at Dongdaemun Design Plaza on Thursday. (Seoul Design Foundation)

Mario Dell’Oglio is a fashion buyer from Italy who is on a grand shopping spree at the Seoul Fashion Week. He is the CEO of the Dell’Oglio luxury fashion stores, a family business in Palermo, Italy. He is also president of the Italian Chamber of Fashion Buyers.

After attending a mentoring seminar on “New Luxury” on Thursday, Dell’Oglio met with The Korea Herald to speak about Seoul Fashion Week.

“I really like to come to Korea. I see a stronger energy (compared to other fashion weeks), the willingness to learn, to enhance and to do things better,” Dell’Oglio said.

He has visited Seoul Fashion Week five times, and according to him, every season gets better.

“A lot of designers are very engaged in improvement, having a great desire to grow. This is fantastic energy for people like me,” he said.

He selected Blindness as the local fashion brand he is keeping an eye on. The high-end brand, led by designers Park Ji-sun and Shin Kyu-yong, pursues genderless fashion, destroying barriers between masculinity and femininity.

“Their interpretation of genderless, the way of expressing their ideas, is exceptional,” the big player in Italia’s luxury fashion industry said. “It is a very contemporary, open-minded proposal, where creativity plays a bigger role.”

Dell’Oglio has been attending seven shows per day in Seoul. Spending his whole day watching runways, he has grasped “an average idea” of fashion week here.

“The average quality of the shows have grown for the past years, their presentation gets better, their collection is more focused, their message is clearer,” he said.

(silverstar@heraldcorp.com)